It was at Jane’s suggestion that we had eliminated meat from our menu and established a kind of liquid food station for the ill-nourished offspring of the quarry women near us.

I assured Miss Gray that babies had been far from my thoughts.  Then I told her of my interview with Kishimoto San; of how Zura Wingate had come to her grandfather’s house; of her rebellion against things that were; and that she was to come to me for private study.  Had I not been so excited over the elements of romance in my story, I would have omitted telling Jane of the incident of the girl and the youth in the park, for it had a wonderful effect on her.

Jane’s sentiment was like a full molasses pitcher that continues to drip in spite of all the lickings you give it.  At once I saw I was in for an overflow.  It was the only part of the story she took in, and as she listened, passed into some kind of a spell.  She cuddled down into her chair and shut her eyes like a child in the ecstasies of a fairy story.  She barely breathed enough to say, “The darlings! and in that lovely old park!  I hope it was moonlight.  Do you suppose they sat under the wistaria?”

Not for a copper mine would I have hinted that through the night there had come before my mind a picture very like that.  Such a picture in the Orient could only be labeled tragedy; the more quickly it was blotted out from mind and reality the better for all concerned.  I spoke positively to my companion.

“Look here, Jane Gray, if it wasn’t for breaking a commandment I would call you foolish with one syllable.  Don’t you know that in this country a young man and woman walking and talking together cannot be permitted?  Neither love nor romance is free or permissible, but they are governed by laws which, if transgressed, will break heart and spirit.”

“So I have heard,” cooed Miss Gray, unimpressed by my statements.  “Wouldn’t it be sweet, though, for you and me to go about teaching these dear Japanese people that young love will have its freedom and make a custom of its own?”

“Yes, indeed!  Wouldn’t it be a sweet spectacle to see two middle-aged women, one fat and one lean, stumping the country on a campaign for young love—­subjects in which we are versed only by hearsay and a stray novel or so!” I said all this and a little more.

Jane went on unheeding, “That’s it.  We must preach love and live it till we have made convicts of every inhabitant.”

Of course she meant “converts,” but the kinks in Miss Gray’s tongue were as startling as the peculiar twists in her religion.

Upon her asking for more particulars I repeated what Kishimoto San had told me.  The girl’s father was an artist by profession and, as nearly as I could judge, a rover by habit.  Of late the family had lived in a western city.  I was not familiar with the name Kishimoto San gave; he called it “Shaal.”

“Oh,” cried my companion, “I know.  I lived there once.  It’s Seattle.”